1 As With grain

Praeneste — modern Palestrina, roughly 35 kilometers southeast of Rome — was a Latin city that retained enough autonomy in the mid-Republican period to strike its own heavy cast bronze coinage. This as belongs to the aes grave tradition, cast rather than struck, which places its production squarely within the monetary conventions of central Italy before Roman standardization gradually absorbed regional issues. Praeneste's civic identity was fiercely defended; the city had sided against Rome during the Latin War of 340–338 BC and paid for it with partial territorial loss, yet continued producing independent coinage for generations afterward.